Many movies deal with
children confronted with the horrors of humanity–wartime, racism,
poverty, crime. Yet, in its own quiet way, Jacques Doillon’s diminutive Ponette
is among the most powerful of them all, simply because it gets the
details of childhood correct. It also never shirks away from the
toughest images of abject grief. One should be warned: it’s pretty nigh
impossible not to view this movie through a sheen of constantly falling
tears. Victoire Thivisol, in the title role, was only four years old
when the film was shot, and this must be regarded as a miracle. It’s
tempting to read up on how Doillon actually elicited this highly
emotional work from such a young soul, but to do so might spoil our
impressions of Thivisol as a performer (she would take the 1996 top
prize at the Venice Film Festival–as far as I know, the youngest actor
to ever win any sort of major award). And this is deserved: by any
measure, as her performance is unforgettable.
The film is exceedingly, wonderfully simple.
With a tiny cast on her forearm, Ponette is the survivor of a car crash
that took her mother’s life. As the film begins, her father (Xavier
Beauvois) is comforting her in her hospital bed, and getting ready to
drive her back to a boarding school. He expresses anger at his deceased
wife–one senses that their relationship was on the skids anyway–while
Ponette is still unable to accept that her mother is gone forever. As a
parting show of love, she gives her daddy her teddy bear to keep, and he
gives her his watch, which she sweetly keeps on her wrist throughout
the picture. Doillon then follows this girl, with his camera wisely
never lifting above her eyeline, as she struggles to come to terms with
her loss.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross once broke down the
approach of death into five stages: denial, anger, bargaining,
depression and acceptance. One can see each of these stages illustrated
here in Ponette’s journey, too, never with a heavy hand and in very much
the same order. Some of the film’s most fascinating scenes have her on
the playground with her classmates, navigating this process. The film is
filled with nominal talk of God and Jesus, and Heaven–both the adults and the
kids indulge in this–and we get the sense that Ponette is alternately
comforted, confused and infuriated by some of this stuff (at one point,
she chides a teacher for feeding her lies). One bossy girl sends Ponette
on a playground obstacle course where the ground is a lava pit of Hell,
and where there are only scattered islands of safety to which to jump.
Her nominal “boyfriend” Mathias listens as she expresses her
mind-twisting sadness, and then he kisses her cheek, comforting her in a
scene of such aching intimacy that we’re both amused and relieved when
he decides to give her his most prized possession: a Batman toy. “You’re
nutty, but nice,” he says. All of this dovetails in a superb scene
where Mathias and Carla decide to give Ponette one final test, exiling
her to a trash bin for five minutes, to replicate the feeling of death
and to strengthen her bravery. Just when we think the film is being
unimaginably cruel, her friends find pity for the weeping Ponette and
rescue her, excitedly telling her she’s passed muster (and Doillon even
finds it possible to wring some laughs from the situation).
To imagine Doillon actually writing
this movie–well, it’s nearly unthinkable because he’s got the strange
logic and cadence of childhood thought and speech down perfectly.
There’s no way that the film was improvised–we know that’s just not an
option–yet everything feels ridiculously authentic. We’re forced into
realizing that this filmmaker has got a preternatural connection to the
world of childhood (and, again, I can’t stress enough the intelligence
he shows with his always-close-to-the ground camera, as well as his
light hand with Phillippe Sarde’s gentle score). I love the scene
where a group of girls are having a giggly but somehow mature nighttime
talk about boys and then, later, try and hoodwink Mathias into
“marriage” with Carla (“You’re like daddies,” one girl tells him. “You
don’t like love,” and then another girl takes offense: “My daddy likes
love”). But then we’re stunned when a playground bully produces a pretty
realistic toy gun and then pushes Ponette around, blaming her for her
mother’s death. This is rough going here, and unlike anything ever seen
in cinema–lithe, but mean.
Still, the moments in which Thivisol, alone,
commands the screen are the film’s jewels (and she’s in nearly every
shot, often in extreme close-up). The pain and turmoil on her frankly
adorable face are imminently palpable throughout, and her tears are a
real trial for the filmgoer. This is not a movie to watch lightly. And
just when Ponette’s depression gets absolutely unbearable–to the point
where she discusses with Mathias her wish to die, and then later begins
digging in the dirt to join her mother–Doillon provides us with a
release valve for all this unrelenting sadness and tension. It’s a twist
that’s totally believable, and totally welcome, and it leads Ponette to
the only place she really can go–to a nook where she can learn to
live again.
NOTE: this review originally appeared in 2015 as part of WONDERS IN THE DARK's genre overview called THE CINEMA OF CHILDHOOD. Check the whole lineup out here:
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